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Friday, October 4, 2013

Global worker protest against Banco Santander

Anarchosyndicalist unions of many countries are coordinating global protests against Banco Santander because of their labor policies caused by outsourcing.

The conflict began in August at the Santander subsidiary ISBAN (computer services), when CNT-AIT denounced the illegal traffic of workers between companies. ISBAN quickly fired the union delegate, sending him to another company, Panel Sistemas.

In response anarchosyndicalist unions from around the World replied with protests wherever Banco Santander has offices.

The protests took place in Brazil, Poland, Uruguay, Portugal, Norway, Spain and other places.

The farewell of a laid out union delegate

In Brazil, the protests have been going on for weeks already.

Picket in Brazil

In Warsaw, Poland, the pickets were violently repressed. But the denounce could not be silenced.

Bilingual posters in Warsaw

In Montevideo, Lisbon, Porto and Oslo there have also been informative actions. Even in countries where Banco Santander keeps no visible offices, like Russia or France, unions have issued communications of solidarity.

But naturally one of the states where most protests have taken place was Spain. Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, León, Salamanca, Ciudad Rodrigo, Villaverde... are some of the towns where workers have protested, not without police repression.

In some places, there have also been sabotages:

ISBAN controls many "meat suppliers" companies, which provides them with a cheap and precarious force of more than 10,000 workers, which are leant to Banco Santander and its subsidiaries at whim, and fired equally at whim, with no cost for the bank, because they are not formally their workers.

This situation of quasi-slavery, where workers fear to be laid out at the smallest grudge, allows for brutal work journeys, lots of extra hours, compulsory displacements, ranks and salaries well under their real functions and many other abuses.

Hundreds of irregular redundancies have already been denounced by CNT-AIT. These redundancies have affected the worse off workers: those illegally ceded between companies, mothers with reduced journey and workers sent overseas.

Banco Santander is the largest financier entity of Spain and one in the global list of so-called "too big to fall". Its top bosses, Emilio Botín, Alfredo Saénz, Jose María Amusategui, etc. have been often denounced for illegal practices, and sometimes even indicted but they have never been actually punished. Recently they hired the infamous Rodrigo Rato, former economy minister under Aznar, former IMF Director in the days of the 2007 collapse and former CEO of rotten privatized savings bank Bankia, whose loses have been "socialized" by means of a EU-sponsored rescue of € 40 billion.

These "businessmen" are known by mafioso practices like the irregular purchase of banks such as Banesto or Totta, millionaire compensations to top managers, money laundering in Switzerland, junk mortgages, home evictions, usury, dirty business with universities, participation in weapon industries and financial mismanagement of the Spanish prison system.

The group got € 2.26 billion as profit in the first half of 2013, almost 30% more than a year ago.